Battery

A battery consists of two or more pieces of artillery in the field. The term battery also implies the imp lace ment of ordnance destined to act offensively or defensively. It also refers to the company charged with a certain number of pieces of ordnance. The ordnance constitutes the battery; men serve it; horses drag it, and epaulments may shelter it. Ambulant Battery , heavy guns mounted on traveling carriages, and moved as occasion may require, either to positions on the coast or in besieged places. Barbette Batteries are those without embrasures, in which the guns are raised to fire over the parapet. Battery d’Enfilade is one that sweeps the whole length of a line, or the face or flank of any work. Battery de Reverse is one which plays upon the rear of the troops appointed to defend a place. Battery en Echarpe is that which plays obliquely. Breaching Battery. See Breach . Covered , or Masked Battery is when the cannon and gunners are covered by a bank or breastwork, commonly made of brushwood, fagots, and earth. Cro -batteries are two batteries which play athwart each other upon the same object, forming there an angle, and battering with more effect, because what one battery shakes the other beats down. Facine and Gabion Batteries are batteries constructed of those machines where sods are scarce, and the earth very loose and sandy. Floating Batteries are such as are erected either on rafts or on the hulls of ships. Gun-battery is a defense constructed of earth faced with green sods or fascines, sometimes of gabions filled with earth. It consists of a breastwork, epaulment, or parapet; the open spaces through which the muzzles of the cannon are pointed are called embrasures , and the solid ma es between the embrasures, merlons ; the genouilleres are those parts of the parapet which cover the carriage of the gun. The platforms are plank floors made to prevent the cannon from sinking into the ground; they are made with a slope to check the recoil of the guns, and to render it more easy to bring them forward again when loaded. Half-sunken Battery. This term is applied to a battery in which the earth to form the parapet is derived partly from a ditch in front and partly from the excavation of the terre-plein. See Artillery , also Cavalier . Mortar-batteries differ from gun-batteries in this, that the parapets have no embrasures, and the platforms have no slope, but are exactly horizontal; the shells being fired quite over the parapet, commonly at an elevation of 45°. Open Battery is a number of cannon, commonly field-pieces, ranged in a row abreast on some natural elevation of ground, or on an artificial bank raised for that purpose. Raised Battery , one whose terre-plein is elevated considerably above the ground. Redan Batteries are such as flank each other at the salient and re-entrant angles of a fortification. Ricochet Battery , so called by its inventor Vauban, was first used at the siege of Aeth in 1697. It is a method of discharging cannon with a very small charge of powder, and with just elevation enough to fire over the parapet. When properly managed its effects are most destructive; for the shot, rolling along the opposite rampart, dismounts the cannon and disperses or destroys the troops. Ricochet practice is not confined to cannon alone; small mortars and howitzers may be effectually employed for the same purpose. Sunken Battery , where the sole of the embrasures is on a level with the ground, and the platforms are consequently sunk below it.